The unknown girl that made it to Carlos Vives' album cover.

This is the story of how a farm worker made me change the whole concept of one of the most important shoots of my career.

Hola,

In 2022, two years after the first part of Carlos Vives’ Grammy-winning album Cumbiana came out, I received a call from his wife and management team with the news that they wanted me to shoot the cover of his new album, Cumbiana 2, a continuation of a music trilogy inspired by the life and the music of his native land of Magdalena. Not only is Carlos Vives the most layered and legendary music artist from Colombia, but through his music he has become the narrator of everything about our culture that we have been taught to forget. Like many developing nations, Colombia has become a very Americanized country, and what do I mean about that? Well, I’ll give you an example: I recently went on vacation with Nick to the coast of the country and EVERY SINGLE person I asked for breakfast recommendations in that area only mentioned places with waffles, pancakes and carrot cakes on their menus. Was this a sign of the end of our culture, or just a little reminder that food is not something I can rely on my rich friends for, because they apparently have no idea that I come from a background where we would eat beef stew for breakfast at a roadside restaurant with plastic chairs?

But back to the story you’re here for. Me and Carlos’ team worked on the concept of the photoshoot for two months. During that time he was very clear that he wanted to shoot in a place near his hometown called Cienaga where a lot of the sounds of his album came from. The other thing he was very firm about was that he pictured Cumbiana (the name of the album) as a woman, and that this woman had to be one of his backup singers, a beautiful curly haired girl with an incredible smile. For Carlos, she represented the energy that he used as inspiration for many of the songs. I saw her pictures and we all agreed that she was the right girl.

The day of the shoot came. The location was an incredible looking colonial house in the middle of a plantain farm. However, thinking about the history of that house made me feel unwell, so I asked the team if it was ok for me to walk around and see the houses where the workers live — because in all honestly, the big house also had horrendous light. I started walking and asked one of the workers who seemed fascinated with my camera to show me where he lived, he took me to his two room little white house, only 3 minutes away from where we were, and that was the moment I saw her: